Many a strong passion may overpower us to such a degree that we no longer know whither we are carried by its wave. Now, what is most characteristic of this state of being swept off our feet is the discarding of our responsible self implied in it. Our central personality, which normally controls our decisions and governs our conduct by its consents and its vetoes—by sanctioning, or withholding its sanction from, whatever course we incline towards—is put out of court; our decisions are taken over its head, as it were.

This is accompanied by a consciousness in us of losing our freedom, of being gripped, dragged about, and dictated to, by something that is not ultimately ourselves. A dynamic influence, stronger but of a lower nature than our habitual set of motives, has dethroned our inner sovereignty and reduced us to a state of dependence. A sort of depersonalization has indeed taken place here, though no neutralization takes place. Our inward integrity and dwelling with ourselves—the habitare secum—is destroyed.

Sensual passions are not the only factor that can produce such effects; men often fall a prey in a very similar manner to mass psychosis in its manifold varieties. Any large group of people, given certain circumstances, may easily form into a mass, responding to some demagogic slogan with a surge of cheap enthusiasm or indignation. We may expect its members, then, to be carried away by the motion of the collective mind, with their rational selves (their moral and prudential consciousness) being obliterated and their center of sanction passed by. The individual feels relieved from responsibility. He is delivered over to an impetuous wave of energy which sweeps aside his self-control and determines his behavior as an irresistible automatism.

No clumsier error could be imagined than to consider this contagion of a sub-personal effervescence as something greater than what originates in one’s personal selfhood. All more highly organized natures that have for a time fallen under such a spell will later, when restored to the use of reason, feel ashamed of yielding to an illegitimate emotion even qualitatively so far below the habitual level of their lives. What a stultifying effect does such a mass psychosis usually exercise on the brains of its victims; how pitiably it depresses the mental standard of the individual!

A psychic rapture of this kind also exhibits the characteristic trait that the subject is not only enslaved by the fascination of the motive that sways him but also enjoys the fact of his intoxication itself, the very condition of morbidly being possessed.